Tag: lawsuit

Final steps underway for pallet shelter site

Advocates: Management style may affect outcomes
by Natalie Hanson | Posted April 4, 2022

photo by Karen Laslo
Pallet shelters

The city’s court-ordered pallet shelter project is close to completion, and advocates for unhoused people are hopeful but cautious about its chance for success.

The proposed code of conduct and the operating standards for the site are now being finalized. The city, plaintiffs and the judge must agree on these standards in order to finalize insurance and open the site on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, said Jesus Center Executive Director Amber Abney-Bass.

Advocates for the unhoused are cautiously optimistic, but have concerns about how the management style will affect use of the site. One question some have is whether there will be armed security. read more

City of Chico takes case to Supreme Court

Justices asked to nix trial over Tyler Rushing's Tasing
by Dave Waddell | Posted March 11, 2022

The City of Chico has escalated its increasingly expensive legal fight with the family of Tyler Rushing by petitioning the highest court in the land.

A Southern California law firm last week filed a motion on behalf of the City with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn an appellate court ruling that ordered part of the Rushing family’s wrongful death lawsuit against the City to proceed to trial.

Seth Stoughton, a top expert on police use of force and a professor of law at the University of South Carolina, said in an email reply to questions that the City’s so-called petition for writ of certiorari has a “snowball-in-hell chance” of being granted by the high court. read more

Lawsuit alleges violations of public records laws

Writer sues City of Chico for access to documents on police killings
by Leslie Layton | Posted February 23, 2022

photo by Karen Waddell
Writer Dave Waddell shows blacked-out pages that were sent him as part of an autopsy report. His attorney alleges “excessive” redacting.

The City of Chico may have lost or destroyed public records related to police killings, and has stonewalled for more than a year in response to record requests, says a lawsuit filed Feb. 18 against the City.

A lawsuit filed by ChicoSol contributing writer Dave Waddell in Butte County Superior Court says the City is in violation of the California Public Records Act because of its continual “withholding of records” as well as its “excessive redactions” in those records that have been released.

“The City has made it clear, by missing its own self-imposed deadlines, again and again, that it will not comply with the law …,” states the lawsuit filed on behalf of Waddell by his San Francisco attorney, Aaron Field. read more

Settlement ends lawsuit against City of Chico

Vice mayor makes 11th-hour bid to postpone settlement
by Leslie Layton | Posted January 16, 2022

photo by Karen Laslo
Evicted campers leave their site after a sweep.

A settlement agreement in the lawsuit related to the city’s treatment of unhoused people, signed Friday by a federal judge, could end the spectacle of chaotic mass evictions that stranded campers who had nowhere to go.

Early last year, a newly-installed City Council began a series of sweeps in parks, near waterways and on patches of grass on public land.

Journalists watched as workers came in atop tractors, rumbling through encampments where displaced people had pitched tents and had failed to move their few belongings to who knows where – until we weren’t allowed to watch.

I remember the woman standing outside her tent under the Highway 99 overpass in Lower Bidwell Park, barefoot, politely putting up with my interview, who then asked me if there was any way I could get her a new pair of socks. read more